Less than a year ago The South Beach Diet was just another unknown eating plan jockeying for position in a volatile marketplace. Publishers were decrying the crowded conditions on the yoga shelves. Pilates? It was called the new yoga, about to be overpublished. Baby boomers were turning to books for help in staving off time's ravages; HMOs were making smarter consumers of us all; and the mind-body connection was being plumbed as never before. An overarching theme, whatever the topic, was credentials: the right ones signaled the difference between major media attention or none, between a hit or a miss. And (of course) the Atkins diet was enjoying spectacular sales.

Fast forward to now. The South Beach Diet (Rodale) has pulled away from the pack as the undisputed new winner in the weight-loss sweepstakes. Sales of Atkins, which has maintained its place on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 335 weeks, show no signs of slowing—or even peaking—and have spawned some wildly successful spin-offs and imitators. The yoga shelves have somehow expanded to accommodate even more titles. Boomers, undaunted in their efforts to turn back the clock, are still looking to bookstores and other outlets for help. And because HMOs haven't gotten any more patient-friendly, people are still fortifying themselves with information on everything from asthma to sleep disorders, so they can show up smarter to their next medical appointment.

Trans-fats have coalesced as a substance of concern (See Kim Severson's Trans Fat Solution, Ten Speed Press, Nov., or Judith Shaw's Trans Fats: The Hidden Killer in Our Food, Pocket Books, May). And Rhodiola may be the next new herb. Haven't heard of it yet? You will—check out Rodale's The Rhodiola Revolution: Transform Your Health with the Herbal Breakthrough of the 21st Century by Richard P. Brown, M.D. and Patricia L. Gerbarg, M.D., with Barbara Graham (June).

Inflammation, linked by new studies to heart disease and other illnesses of aging, has become a hot health topic. Childhood obesity, which has reached epidemic proportions, is about to takes its place in the limelight. The need for children to shape up is urgent, says the surgeon general, Dr. Richard Carmona, who implored pediatricians at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics earlier this month to do something to help. Obesity, he said, costs the U.S. $117 billion per year in medical bills and lost productivity and is responsible for 300,000 deaths annually. Overweight children—nine million by current count—become overweight adults.

How Hot Is Hot?

Just how successful are the bestselling diet books? Florida cardiologist Arthur Agatston's South Beach Diet, which tells readers that the secret to weight loss is not counting calories or carbs or fats but simply eating the right foods, has approximately 4.7 million copies in print after 22 printings since it appeared in April. Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution, the original low carb diet, has more than 16 million copies in print in all formats (HarperCollins hardcover, Quill trade paper and Avon mass market), and has been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than six years. Atkins for Life (St. Martin's, Jan. 2003) has almost two million copies in print; The Essential Dr. Atkins for Life Kit, also from St. Martin's, has shipped more than 750,000.

The other juggernaut of the current dieting crop, Dr. Phil McGraw's The Ultimate Weight Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom, has 2.5 million copies in print after nine printings. Published in September, the Free Press title was selected by nine major book clubs. Dr. Phil's face will soon appear on a new line of health and nutritional supplements, Shape Up, which will be sold at major retailers such as Target and Wal-Mart.

"Diets are where we live at the moment," says Tami Booth, editor-in-chief of the women's group at Rodale Press. "Readers have let us know what they want in terms of information—not just diet but lifestyle, tools to sustain them over time. Our first spin-off from South Beach is Dr. Agatston's South Beach Good Fat/Good Carbs Guide [Jan.], about how to shop and buy foods." The one-million-copy first printing, says Booth, "is about three times what we expected—and we shipped the whole number." Other scheduled spin-offs are La Dieta South Beach (Jan.), the Spanish-language version of the original, and The South Beach Diet Cookbook: More Than 200 Delicious Recipes That Fit the Nation's Top Diet, which will have a first printing of 500,000. Booths adds that Rodale will keep the original book in hardcover throughout 2004.

New Atkins titles on the horizon are The Atkins Essentials: A Two-Week Program to Jump-Start Your Low Carb Lifestyle by Atkins Health & Medical Information (Avon, Dec.); The Dr. Atkins' Quick & Easy Cookbook, updated by Robert Atkins and Veronica Atkins (Touchstone/Fireside, Jan.); The Atkins Shopping Guide (Avon, Apr.); and The Atkins Diabetes Revolution: The Groundbreaking Approach to Preventing and Controlling Diabetes (HarperCollins, Aug.).

"I feel as if there should be an Atkins section," says Jodi Kinzler, diet and health book buyer at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, Calif. "It's going from huge to huger."

On the Dr. Phil front, Pocket Books will publish his Ultimate Weight Solution Food Guide, a mass market companion, in January, with information on portion size, strategies for eating out and other practical info. The Free Press has The Ultimate Weight Solution for Teens: The 7 Keys to Weight Freedom.

Among other blockbuster diet books, Sugar Busters!, self-published in the mid-'90s and picked up by Ballantine in 1998, still sells thousands of copies a week, says publishing director Maureen O'Neal. "It's a huge franchise, and we are constantly repackaging it." The six Sugar Busters titles, she adds, have sold more than five million copies. Coming next month is a mass market edition of The New Sugar Busters! and El Nuevo Sugar Busters!, the Spanish-language version of the revised edition. "We expect Atkins-type numbers," says O'Neal of the mass market version. QVC will come out with its own Sugar Busters! products next year.

Harvey Diamond, who co-authored the 12-million-copy HCI hit Fit for Life, is back with Fit for Life, Not Fat for Life (Dec.), in which he advocates a diet comprised of more food from living sources (vegetables and fruit) than dead. In the words of HCI communications director Kim Weiss, "I tout it as the anti-diet because it's so easy, smart and simple."

McGraw Hill's The Fat Flush Plan program by nutritionist Ann Louise Gittleman (300,000 hardcover sales in two years) has seen the line extend to other products including, in January, The Fat Flush Fitness Plan, written with fitness expert Joanie Greggains. "The premise of the diet is to detoxify your body and eliminate cellulite," says Lynda Luppino, v-p of marketing and communications. "Gittleman has a page on iVillage and has a huge following; the book was a huge hit in the U.K."

Reader's Digest's Change One: The Breakthrough 12-Week Eating Plan by John Hastings with Peter Jaret and Mindy Hermann, the company's first-ever diet program, sold 200,000 copies in hardcover; a paperback edition is due in January. The program uses visual guides and one change at a time as its approach to weight loss and good nutrition.

Mark Gompertz, president and publisher of Touchstone Fireside, tells PW, "What we think is working the best right now for our Fireside imprint is brands. Both Weight Watchers (Weight Watchers Cook It Quick, Jan.) and Atkins (Dr. Atkins' Quick & Easy Cookbook, Jan.) are doing very well—even better than in previous years and in previous incarnations. In general, authors with a solid platform to showcase their work, videos or DVDs or a presence on QVC, seem to work well when they bring out books."

"If you have a study, a celebrity client and testimonials from before and after—that's an incredibly powerful tool, either in print or photo," says Marnie Cochran, health books editor at Da Capo. "If you have all three things you have a good shot at making a go of it. In diet there's rarely a new thing, but people buy in droves and in multiples. Celebrity sells, or an M.D.—or better yet, both."

Weighting for Publication

Among the new crop of diet book hopefuls are The Packard Weight Health Plan: An Easy 5-Step Program for Permanent Weight Loss by Andrew Packard (Ballantine, Jan.), a gastroenterologist who has spent the past 10 years studying with the world's foremost weight loss doctors; The Perfect Fit Diet: The Customized, Science-Based, Plan for YOUR Genes, Tastes, and Lifestyle by Lisa Sanders, M.D. (Rodale, Jan.), a Yale Medical School faculty member and obesity specialist who analyzed more than 700 weight-loss programs to uncover the truth about dieting; and The Calcium Key: The Revolutionary Diet Discovery That Will Help You Lose Weight Faster by Michael Zemel and Bill Gottlieb (Wiley, Jan.), which is based on peer-reviewed research that shows how specific amounts of calcium in the diet speed up metabolism and weight loss.

Out last month is Diet Trials: How to Succeed at Dieting by Lyndel Cos

tain (BBC Books, dist. by Trafalgar Square) a companion book to the BBC series Diet Trials, which puts popular diet programs to the test. Escape Your Weight (St. Martin's, Jan.) by Edward J. Jackowski, the founder and CEO of Exude, the nation's largest one-on-one motivational and fitness company, "bucks the trend of gimmicky diet books," says publicity director Dori Weintraub. "Jackowski takes a tough love approach. He stresses that avoiding foods high in carbs or fat instead of portion control is simply ineffective. He promotes a sensible eating plan combined with an exercise level formulated for each individual."

Drs. Bradley and Craig Willcox follow up on the success of last year's New York Times bestseller, The Okinawa Program, with The Okinawa 8-Week Diet Plan, coming in April from Clarkson Potter.

Two books specifically targeting men are Rodale's The Abs Diet: The Body-Transforming Superfood That Will Turn Fat into Muscle by Men's Health editor Dave Zinczenko with Ted Spiker (June) and Fat Daddy/Fit Daddy: A Man's Guide to Balancing Fitness and Family by Lawrence Schwartz (Taylor Trade Publishing, Jan.), written in what the publisher calls "man-tongue"—that is, a non-threatening, masculine tone. "Because there are so many diet trends out there right now, I think the most important aspect to launching any kind of diet or fitness plan is branding," says Taylor marketing director Nancy Rothschild. "With dieting books you're not only trying to sell the methodology, you are trying to sell the person who's promoting it. We've produced sport bottles with Schwartz's title info, and his Web site will have excerpts from the book."

Coming in January from Inner Traditions, which believes readers are looking for a holistic approach to better eating habits, is The Acid-Alkaline Diet for Optimum Health, in which Christopher Vasey advocates restoring health by creating balance in the diet.

"There is a constant dialogue across the country about what is most beneficial in terms of dieting, what is safe and what works," says Avon/Morrow publisher Michael Morrison. "It seems to help the sales of all diet books. And a lot of people try different diets when the results aren't as quick or effective as they would like. There's room for all the titles that come out; they all have merit."

And Tom Miller, executive editor of general interest books at Wiley, adds, "There's always a market for a fresh new approach to weight loss, particularly since obesity and its attendant health problems like diabetes and Syndrome X are growing in epidemic proportions. In March, we'll be launching a major new alliance with NutriSystem, with Nourish: The NutriSystem Way to Weight Loss, a new model for weight loss—lower carbs, higher protein, more healthy fats—from one of the top three brands in dieting." NutriSystem, notes Miller, will support the book with major infomercials and a big push on QVC.

Healthy Is as Healthy Reads

On the health front, nutrition and fitness are booming, and a number of publishers have created new imprints, formed new partnerships or launched new series. The American Diabetes Association created the Small Steps Press imprint to publish books about healthy living and lifestyle. Whereas all ADA books used to include the word "diabetes" in the title, none of the Small Steps books will. "We are trying to reach a larger audience, to tell all Americans, not just those with diabetes, the importance of leading a healthy lifestyle," says Lee Romano Sequeira, director of rights, permissions and special markets. One of the first titles in the program is Dr. Gavin's Health Guide for African Americans by James R. Gavin (Mar.), chairman of the National Diabetes Education program. The book covers topic such as heart disease, high blood pressure and obesity that particularly concern African-Americans.

Other forthcoming books targeting the African-American market—especially women—include Livin' Large: African American Sisters Confront Obesity (Hilton Publishing, Mar.) by cardiovascular specialist Stacy Ann Mitchell and Teri D. Mitchell, a producer for Oprah; Dr. Ro's Ten Secrets to Livin' Healthy by Dr. Rovenia Brock (Bantam Hardcover, Jan.), a leading African-American nutritionist who has a platform on Black Entertainment Television's Heart & Soul; and African Americans' Guide to Managing Asthma by LeRoy M. Graham Jr., M.D. (Pocket, May).

Another imprint launch is Da Capo's Lifelong Books, dedicated to titles on health, fitness, family, pregnancy and relationships; one of the first titles is Dr. Jonathan Sackner Bernstein's Before It Happens to You (Feb.). According to senior editor Marnie Cochran, "The book presents a program for reversing or preventing heart disease without a change in diet or exercise." Other books about heart disease and inflammation include Stop Inflammation Now by Richard M. Fleming, M.D., with Tom Monte (Putnam, Dec.), which explains what to do about the triggers for inflammation; The Inflammation Cure: How to Combat the Hidden Factor Behind Heart Disease, Arthritis, Asthma, Diabetes, Alzheimer's Disease, Osteoporosis and Other Diseases of Aging by William Joel Meggs, M.D., with Carol Svec (McGraw-Hill, Sept.); and Stopping Inflammation: Relieving the Cause of Degenerative Diseases by Nancy Appleton (Square One, Apr.), which examines the underlying causes for these serious ailments.

McGraw-Hill has just announced a new partnership with Harvard Medical School to publish general interest health titles written by Harvard faculty members, with the first book scheduled for 2005. "Harvard believes an educated consumer will increase the quality of medical care throughout the country," says Luppino. "The more informed, the better. In health there's a huge need for credible information."

The desire to serve up credible information is behind Random House Reference's American Medical Association Complete Medical Encyclopedia (Oct.), a comprehensive guide designed to help people understand their bodies and illnesses and make the most out of doctor and hospital visits. "This is a first reference," says Jeanne Kramer, publisher of the reference line. "If you look up 'gall bladder' on the Web you get 159,000 potential sites. This book, which is organized alphabetically, helps you figure out what you need to know—the first response you need from an authority." Though Random and the AMA did an earlier encyclopedia together, this one is a new collaboration and the book was built from the ground up.

Merck Publishing, having published the second edition of its Home Manual of Medical Information (Simon & Schuster, over 170,000 copies sold) will bring out The Merck Manual of Health and Aging (Apr.), with large type and generous line spacing to appeal to older audiences. The book explores ways to prevent disease and improve health but mostly looks at the health care system for older people and the disorders they are likely to experience. Pocket Books will bring out the paperback of the second home edition of the Merck Manual of Medical Information in May.

Rodale Press inaugurates a new annual series by Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld, wherein the doctor, author of five previous books, reviews the big medical discoveries of the year and their health implications to give consumers a perspective on what they should pay attention to in terms of treatments and discoveries. The first title, Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld's Breakthrough Health: 157 Up-to-the-Minute Medical Discoveries, Treatments, and Cures That Can Save Your Life from America's Most Trusted Doctor, will be available in January. Sierra Club Books, under the umbrella of the University of California Press, launches a new Bioneer series in May, with a book called Ecological Medicine: Healing Earth, Healing Ourselves, which presents the new field of ecological medicine from multiple contributors including the popular author Andrew Weil.

Getting Specific

"On the whole, to be successful the subjects of health titles have had to shift from the general to the specific, i.e., from A-Z guides aimed at general audiences to cherry-picked subjects targeting specific groups or sufferers," says St. Martin's editor Heather Jackson. This shift is borne out at Reader's Digest, which formed the Home and Health Division two years ago to develop books targeted to chronic disease sufferers and brought in Neil Wertheimer, formerly of Rodale Press, to be the division's publishing director.

One of the titles on Reader's Digest's spring list is Eat to Beat Diabetes: Over 300 Scrumptious Recipes to Help You Enjoy Life and Stay Well, edited by Robyn Webb (Jan.). "Nutrition is a particularly hot topic," Wertheimer says. "Cookbooks with a clear focus are going very well. Generic promises aren't. People want a specific outcome if they are going to invest money and time in a book, something like Cut Your Cholesterol: Lose 30 Points in 12 Weeks [Jan]. That kind of specific promise does help a health book."

At Avery, The Good Carb Cookbook by Sandra Woodruff (2000), "took off dramatically this year, selling more than twice in the first six month of 2003 what it sold in the previous two years, clearly catching the low-carb trend," says publisher John Duff. Using food as medicine, as in Prescription for Dietary Wellness by Phyllis A. Balch (paper edition out last May), continues strong for Avery.

When it comes to chronic diseases, "there's not as much competition as you might think," says Wertheimer. The relative lack of books in this area makes sense given the large number of chronic ailments and the intense need to understand them, especially when confronted with a doctor who doesn't have enough time to explain the problem, the treatment or the prognosis. Thus it seems that highly formatted series are common here. Hatherleigh launched its Living With line in 1997 with Living with Hepatitis C (now in its third edition) and now has several additional titles, including Living with Hemocrhomatosis, Living with Chronic Heartburn and Living with Chronic Sinusitis. Next July Living with Chronic Pain will join the list.

Recently published titles in Warner's What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About... series include Hypertension by Mark Houston (Oct.) and Children's Allergies and Asthma by Paul Ehrlich and Larry Chiaramonte (Nov.); coming in January is Hypothyroidism by Ken Blanchard with Marietta Abrams Brill.

Quill's Living Well series adds Living Well with Chronic Fatigue SyndromeandFibromyalgia: What Your Doctor Doesn't Tell You That You Need to Know by Mary J. Shomon (Apr.). Human Kinetics'Action Plan for Arthritis by A. Lynn Millar (Aug. 2003) and Action Plan for Diabetes by Darryl Barnes (Apr.) fall into the company's line for chronic illness. New Page offers the Tell Me What to Eat series, the latest of which is Tell Me What to Eat if I Have Diabetes by Elaine Magee (Oct. 2003). University Press of Mississippi's Understanding Health and Sickness series, which has already tackled depression and childhood obesity, adds Barbara T. Zimmerman's Understanding Breast Cancer Genetics and Nathan Lavid's Understanding Stuttering, both in January.

Alternative No Longer

Health books with an alternative slant have become so ubiquitous—packaged more and more as part of the mainstream—that the distinction between traditional medicine and alternative cures has been obliterated in many quarters. Wiley's Balance Your Brain, Balance Your Life: 28 Days to Feeling Better than You Ever Have by Jan Lombard and Christian Renna (Jan.), about how regulating the levels of dopamine and serotonin in the brain and body will lead to better health and an improved mood, would have been called "alternative medicine" five years ago, says Miller. "Now, we call it a hot new health book. And the clubs see it as crossing over. It's been taken by One Spirit and by Book of the Month Club."

Along similar lines is Dr. Eric Braverman's The Edge: Achieve Total Health &Longevity with the Balanced Brain Advantage, an April release from Sterling that recommends supplementing your diet with food and natural supplements to reverse or prevent the effects of aging. "It's unusual nowadays to see plain health titles without some aspect of mind/body," says Miller.

Though publishers are bullish about the incorporation of alternative cures into traditional medicine, booksellers haven't necessarily made adjustments to their shelving. According to Kinzler at Vroman's, the alternative health section is still a separate one—"It helps focus people." But she notes that it continues to grow and flourish.

Among the plethora of titles that express the broadening reach of diet and health are If the Buddha Came to Dinner: How to Nourish Your Body to Awaken Your Spirit by Hale Sofia Schatz with Shira Shaiman (Hyperion, Mar.), which explores how eating can be a catalyst for spiritual growth; and Meditation in Motion by Barbara Bartocci (Sorin Books, Mar.), which shows through true stories how people have discovered the connection between physical activity and spiritual awareness. "What has traditionally been 'alternative' in health books is now embraced as part of an overall health program," says Eileen Bertelli, Avery associate publisher. "Readers want to participate fully in the process of wellness and not simply eat right and/ or exercise."

Publisher Harry Lynn at Harbor Press says the trend toward a synthesis of orthodox and alternative medicine could give consumers the best of both worlds (aka integrative medicine) if only the writers would take a neutral stance. "So far," he tells PW, "the trend has tripped on the fact that most books espousing integrative medicine actually express a heavy-handed bias toward one of the two camps." Hoping to achieve a middle-of-the-road approach, Harbor will publish Balanced Healing: Combining Modern Medicine with Safe & Effective Alternative Therapies by Larry Altshuler, M.D., (Feb.), a home reference work for treating most common ailments without bias toward one medical approach or the other.

Books linking health to performance are everywhere. Dr. Kevin Fosnocht, for example, offers steps for professionals to capitalize on better health in the just-released Living Longer, Working Stronger: Simple Steps for Business Professionals to Capitalize on Better Health (Aspatore Books, Oct.). In Hyperion's Total Body Transformation (Jan.), professional trainer Steve Ilg presents a program that combines five disciplines (strength, cardio, yoga, meditation, nutrition) with four principles (breath and posture, mindfulness, appropriate action and practice) to achieve inner and outer fitness. Another Hyperion title, The Quest for Peace, Love and a 24" Waist by Deborah Low (Jan.) was praised by Deepak Chopra as "a very enlightening way to lose weight." The Jodere Group is publishing Maximize Your Metabolism: Double Your Metabolism in 30 Days or Less by Christopher Guerriero (Jan.), which stresses that diet and exercise are not enough; what's necessary is a whole-body and lifestyle approach. Originally self-published, the book reached #5 on Amazon last March when it first appeared.

Where might the category go from here? At least one publisher has found "healthy" life beyond books. Like many of his colleagues, John Teall, marketing and sales director at Bay/Soma Publishing, worries about how crowded the category has become. So he's branched out into card decks—a format, he says, that has proved successful for other publishers and that perfectly fits the subject matter. "Response to The Low-Carb Meals in Minutes Deck: Quick Start Recipe Cards (Jan.), based on the popular low-carb cookbook by Linda Gassenheimer, was so strong we immediately added The Low-Carb Smoothies Deck to our spring list, and we have two more planned for fall. These decks are a great marriage of a hot topic, low-carb diets, and a format that fits the content and is increasingly popular as an impulse item." Gassenheimer's Low-Carb Meals in Minutes has sold more than 250,000 copies, Teall reports; More Low-Carb Meals in Minutes has sold 100,000 copies.

Trying to put a finger on the diet and health market is like the five blind men trying to describe an elephant. It is big and varied, and one part of it is not necessarily like another. In sum, however, it seems evident that the parts are continuously melding into a strong, profitable and, well, healthy whole.

Life Without HRTOne of the biggest issues in women's health nowadays is hormones and what to do about replenishing them once menopause strikes and causes them to all but disappear. Some six million women were taking synthetic hormones when the Women's Health Initiative halted its long-term study last May of 16,000 women because it found that women on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) were proving to be at higher risk for heart disease, stroke and breast cancer than those who weren't.
Two months later, Linda Laucella's The Hormone Decision: 7 Questions to Ask Yourself and Your Doctor About Hormone Replacement Therapy and Other Options (McGraw-Hill) was rushed into print. Now, another round of books dealing with the subject is getting ready to be shipped. All tell the same story: natural alternatives are the way to go.
In The Sexy Years (Crown, Feb.) Suzanne Somers makes the case that taking natural hormones will give older women great health, sex and vitality. Beautiful Bones Without Hormones: The Revolutionary New Diet and Exercise Program to Reduce the Risk of Osteoporosis and Keep Your Bones Healthy and Strong by Leon Root, M.D., (Gotham Books, May) presents a HRT-free diet and exercise program for increasing bone density and reducing the risk of osteoporosis.
Two Warner titles on the topic are The 30-Day Natural Hormone Plan: Look and Feel Young Again—Without Synthetic HRT (Jan.) by Erika Schwartz, founder of the International Hormone Institute and a longtime opponent of synthetic hormones; and Dr. John Lee's updated edition of The Breakthrough Book on Natural Progesterone, which explains why HRT drugs can be harmful. Another updated work, Ann Louise Gittleman's Before the Change: Taking Charge of Your Perimenopause (Harper San Francisco, Dec.) addresses the bad news about HRT and provides information about alternative treatments. (The book's current edition has sold more than 200,000 copies since its 1998 publication.)
Women, Hormones & the Menstrual Cycle: Herbal & Medical Solutions from Adolescence to Menopause by midwife Ruth Trickey (Allen & Unwin, Apr.), provides medical, surgical and herbal treatments for menstrual and hormonal disorders, with a heavy focus on natural remedies. Avery's just-released The HRT Solution by Marla Ahlgrimm and John Kells puts forth a program of natural hormone replacement.
Snacktime ReduxWith the obesity epidemic among both adults and children garnering headlines, publishers are pondering how the issue will translate into book sales. "Obviously we don't think the American love affair with food and thus with weight loss is ending," says St. Martin's editor Heather Jackson. "But the same fascination that people have with their own waistlines has not yet translated to a big book on keeping children fit."
One title with an excellent track record is Houghton Mifflin's Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People on Earth by Greg Critser, a journalist who became an expert on the subject of obesity and Type II diabetes in children and teens after researching this book, his first. The trade paper edition is due out in January with a new epilogue that updates the text in terms of school lunches and other action items.
Hatherleigh Press has just published Underage and Overweight: America's Childhood Obesity Crisis—What Every Parent Needs to Know by Frances M. Berg, the founder and editor of Healthy Weight Journal and a nutritionist activist. According to publisher Kevin Moran, "We are going to blitz the media with review copies and press releases, with a free copy being sent to every member of the U.S. Senate and Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson."
Nutritionist Sharron Dalton takes a similar call-to-action approach in Our Overweight Children: What Parents, Schools, and Communities Can Do to Control the Fatness Epidemic (Univ. of California Press, Apr.), calling for a united approach that promotes the role of parents, health professionals, schools and community leaders.
Recognizing that children have less control over their diets than adults do over theirs, Drs. William Sears and Peter Sears with Sean Foy grapple with the problem in Dr. Sears' L.E.A.N. Kids (NAL Trade Paperback, Sept. 2003). The fitness program worked up by the authors—a pediatrician, a family practitioner and a fitness expert—includes tips on dealing with birthday parties, peer pressure, the school cafeteria and other potential challenges.
Crown Books for Young Children is publishing two books aimed at educating kids themselves about proper diet and exercise. Be Healthy! It's a Girl Thing: Food, Fitness, and Feeling Great by Dr. Lilian Cheung, director of health promotion and communications at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Mavis Jukes, a teen health writer (Dec.), and The Busy Body Book: A Kid's Guide to Fitness by Lizzy Rockwell (Feb.). Both books fill needed niches as tools for parents to use to relay the importance of health and fitness to their kids.
Dr. Phil's golden touch will no doubt bless The Ultimate Weight Solution for Teens: The 7 Keys to Weight Freedom by Jay McGraw, with a foreword by Dr. Phil McGraw (Free Press). Out this week, the book deals with the specific issues teens face when it comes to weight matters.
Perigee, which according to publisher John Duff has received many proposals on the topic, will bring out Barbarians at the Plate by MariaLisa Calta (June 2005), which, Duff says, addresses the area of kids and food with echoes of Peg Bracken. HP, also under Duff's stewardship, will publish Petite Appetite by Lisa Barnes (Apr. 2005), a cookbook for the junior set with a strong health and developmental component to it.
"The way to get thinner," says Rutledge Hill Press publisher Lawrence Stone, "is not to just read diet books, but to follow what they say. There will always be an opportunity for newcomers in this field—what's important is that those who write the books can demonstrate that what they say works." He's placing his bets on Naomi Neufeld, a pediatric endocrinologist and the founder of KidShape, a weight loss program for children and families that's about to expand throughout the country to 175 centers by the end of next year. Neufeld's KidShape: A Practical Prescription for Raising Healthy, Fit Children, written with Pete Nelson, will hit the shelves in April.
Exercise Programs du JourWhen Rodale published Denise Austin's Pilates for Every Body: Strengthen, Lengthen, and Tone—with This Complete 3-Week Body Makeover last August, the Pilates shelves were already groaning, says Tami Booth, editor-in-chief of the women's group. "It was crowded then and we were late to the game, but we sold 100,000 copies."
Sales of books on yoga, a more seasoned subject area, are also robust, with no signs of slowdown. "Yoga books are still selling like hot cakes," says Riverhead editor Amy Hertz. "It's still basically a phenomenon on the coasts. Until it saturates the middle of the country it will keep on going." According to Ballantine editor Maureen O'Neal, "The number out the door isn't so important. You know you will reorder."
Is the yoga category too full? "It's mighty full," says Stan Hynes, buyer at Northshire Books in Manchester Center, Vt. Too full? "It's a good category and sells well and so it gets overpublished. But it's a good category."
Among the crop of books already in the stores are Airplane Yoga (Riverhead) by Rachel Lehmann-Haupt, a journalist, and Bess Abrahams, a yoga teacher, who provide a stress-busting yoga workout for beginners and experts to do on a plane. Glow Guide: Yoga by Andrea McCloud is, says publisher Chronicle Books, a practical pocket reference to help readers "achieve that special inner glow."
From HCI Books comes Real Men Do Yoga: 21 Star Athletes Reveal Their Secrets for Strength, Flexibility and Peak Performance by John Capouya. Another title, Yoga for Men by Thomas Claire (New Page Books), is a comprehensive introduction geared to guys of all ages and backgrounds. And for those who crave a daily dose of yogic wisdom, there is 365 Yoga by Julie Rappaport (Tarcher), which follows the format of 365 Buddha, 365 Tao and 365 Zen to boil down a thousand years of spiritual practice into one digestible unit per day.
Books in the pipeline include Yoga for Golfers by Katherine Roberts (McGraw-Hill, Apr.), which connects the mind and body to create a fitness regimen to improve one's golf game. Extreme Yoga: Challenging Poses for a Cutting-Edge Practice by Jessie Chapman (Ulysses Press, Apr.) pushes students to perfect each aspect of their practice—breathing, focus and physical technique. Cool Yoga Tricks by Miriam Austin (Ballantine, Jan.), who also wrote Yoga for Wimps (150,000 copies sold in trade paper) features more than 100 techniques to help people improve their ability to perform yoga poses easily and effortlessly. Coming next month from Findhorn Press is Healing Addiction with Yoga: A Yoga Program for People in 12-Step Recovery by Annalisa Cunningham.
Yoga for a Healthy Menstrual Cycle and Yoga for Healthy Bones (Shambhala Publications, Apr.) both by Linda Sparrowe and Patricia Walden, expand their earlier collaboration, The Woman's Book of Yoga and Health . Baron Baptiste's Yoga Boot Camp Kit, containing 2 CDs, a set of flash cards and an interactive workbook, arrives in June from St. Martin's. "What consumers love," says associate publisher Lisa Senz, "is the chance to take a personal class with an established expert in the field, but go at their own pace and in the privacy of their own home."
As an antidote to some of the more Westernized interpretations, Deepak Chopra will weigh in with his view of the subject in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga (Wiley, July), with co-writer David Simon, a director at the Chopra Center. "The book gets to the root of the discipline, the most ancient healing system," says executive editor Tom Miller. "Yoga was a way of life. Postures were only one part of it. There are some postures in the book, but mostly it is about how yoga can change your life." The book targets readers of Chopra's Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, which sold more than one million copies in hardcover. "Chopra is a golden brand," Miller says.
In Mastering the Secrets of Yoga Flow (Perigee, Jan.), Doug Swenson introduces Sadhana Yoga, which connects traditional yoga postures with flowing movements to enhance the experience that will help yoga students relax and build their strength. Yoga Journal: A Personal Journey Toward Growth is by Jill Jones (Running Press, June), a certified instructor of Iyengar yoga in Pittsburgh who counts the members of the Pittsburgh Steelers among her clients.
American Yoga: The Paths and Practices of America's Greatest Yoga Masters by Carrie Schneider (Barnes & Noble, Apr.) includes advice from such well-known teachers as Rodney Yee, Beryl Bender Birch and Mary Dunn. Hot Yoga: Energizing, Rejuvenating, Healing by Marilyn Barnett (Barron's, Feb.) presents a method developed in the 1960s by Bikram Choudhury that entails working out in rooms heated to 100 degrees, which enhances muscle suppleness and aids body detoxification. First There Is a Mountain: A Yoga Romance by Elizabeth Kadetsky (Little, Brown, Jan.), relates one woman's search for physical and emotional peace in the world of Hindu wisdom via B.K.S. Iyengar, the man who introduced yoga to a Western audience. The book is billed as part memoir, part exploration of the gulfs dividing body, will and spirit. From one of the more high-profile yoga gurus, Moving into Balance by Rodney Yee (Rodale, May) is about developing a great home yoga practice for practitioners at all levels.
Pilates books, which started as strict interpretations of Joseph Pilates's dancer-oriented methods using mats and have since explored almost every aspect of the discipline, are beginning, as yoga books have done, to expand into new territory, confounding skeptics who thought there was nowhere left to take the discipline. Standing Pilates by Joan Breibart (Wiley, June) might be the biggest innovation, providing exercises that leave the mat altogether. "You can do it sitting or standing, wherever you are," says Miller. "It's such a fresh approach." Mari Winsor's The Pilates Powerhouse (Da Capo), one of the first Pilates books to hit the market in 1999 (180,000 copies sold), has just been reissued with a new cover.
Somewhere between yoga and Pilates are a spate of books that mix and match elements of each discipline to come up with something new: Diane Holland's YogaPilates (Sterling, Dec.) combines the benefits of yoga's breathing and relaxation techniques with the core strength training of Pilates. Jonathan Urla's Yogilates (HarperResource, Jan.) integrates Hatha yoga techniques with Pilates mat-based exercises.
But why be disciplined at all? Why not just move? If you have to ask, you'll probably go for Hilken Mancini and Maura Jasper's Punk Rock Aerobics (DaCapo, Jan.) The book contains "75 killer moves, 50 punk music classics and 25 reasons to get off your ass and exercise." ("Use bricks as weights. Wear your favorite band tee. There are no rules.")